I have never heard of the Neanderthals making art. The first objects
considered art was made by archaic homo sapiens, to the neanderthals. If
you are refering to the arrangeement of bear skulls found, thosee have
been associateed with burials, which a lot of peopkle don't believe the
Neanderthal's were capable of. I know this becuse I didd a huf\ge
research paper last year on it. I am allso really interested in the
Neanderthals, and am considereing focusing on that portion of human
evolution in grad school.
About h, habilis, speaking. It is considered unlikely since
there brain was small (no more than 750, i think) and I think that since
there posture was not perfectly upright like H. erectus, their larynx was
not low enough (the more upright the lower your larynx and voice box
gets, so you can have it positioned like modern humans) and they could
not talk. Maybe if you read about endocasts done on habilis you would be
able to find out how developed, or if they existed at all any areas
capable of speech (Brocha's or Wernicke's perhaps).
I also think that they did not need speeech to survive. The most
important thing homo habilis did was make tools, very crude one at that,
and it has been shown that chimps can make tools with a brain of 450
cc's. The children mimick the parent's and that how the technique is
passed on. I think to consider speeech we may have to look at erectus
and those that foloowed. It seems that eerectus may have had some form
of communication becuase he mamged to leave \Africa and inhabit all
different climates (even snowy reegions) You need some kind of
inteelligence to do that, since they weere usedd to warm climates, and
also to make fire, build living structures, and be able to plan hunts to
kill large animals, like mammoths.

I could be totally wrong of course, but I'm glad to see someone as
interested int eh neanderthals as I am, and who doesn't think they were
just brutes who lived in the shadows ofhomo sapiens, and just died out.
Vanessa
PS...if you want to read about the bear skulls, just look for books on
Neanderthal burials and in the index look for cult of the cave bear.
I'll look around for my paper and tell you the books I used.